As the Liberals move forward with their electoral reform plans, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent sent a shot across the bow in Ottawa Friday morning: replace the first-past-the-post system with a ranked ballot — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s preferred option — and the result would be even worse than the status quo.

“The Liberal government has opened the door by promising, over and over again, that the 2015 federal election will be the last held under first-past-the-post – a system that produces false majorities, exaggerates regional divisions, and leaves a huge numbers of voters without a voice in Parliament,” Broadbent said in opening remarks at his institute’s 2016 Progress Summit.

“And one of the other suggestions on offer — so-called ranked ballots — would be even worse than what we have. Simply put, ranked ballots in a federal election would be like first-past-the-post on steroids — even larger false majorities, results even more outrageously torqued and even more unrepresentative of the popular will.”

While the NDP have long advocated for proportional representation, where seats are are accorded to parties based on their proportion of the popular vote, Trudeau has favoured a ranked ballot.

A ranked ballot has voters rank candidates in order of preference and, should no candidate get more than half of the first-choice votes, eliminates the candidate with the lowest first-choice votes until a winner emerges.

Their seat count would have risen to 217 from 184, the Conservatives would have dropped to 66 from 99, and the NDP would have won 50 seats rather than 44, which helps explain Broadbent’s opposition.

The Liberals promised in their platform to set up an all-party committee that would decide what would replace FPTP, and then introduce electoral reform legislation within 18 months of forming government — giving them roughly a year left to do so.

The committee has yet to be established.

Though the Conservatives have demanded a referendum on electoral reform — several of which, at the provincial level, have resulted in keeping FPTP — NDP democratic reform critic Nathan Cullen has proposed giving Canadians a chance to try out a new system first.

On Friday, however, Broadbent was adamant that proportional representation is the only way to ensure every vote counts.

“The number of seats held by a party in the House of Commons must closely match its actual level of votes throughout the country. Simply put, it’s about creating a fair, equal and engaging voting system — one that is bringing together people from different political persuasions to back PR — from Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff Guy Giorno to the Liberal Party of Manitoba,” he said.

Ahead of the NDP convention next week that will determine whether Thomas Mulcair will remain leader of the NDP, Broadbent also gave Mulcair subtle words of encouragement.

“There often arises on the left, to be quite candid, most often in the wake of electoral disappointments — and I’ve had a few myself, I say to Tom, in the past — there’s often a sterile debate as to whether the best way forward is through bold ideas, on the one hand, or professionalized electoral techniques on the other,” he said.

“In a democracy, and for social democrats, it can never be a kind of either-or proposition. We need to root our activism in both bold progressive ideas and in ways to improve our appeal to the broad majority of Canadians.”